Instinct
by jenna-pls
Summary: Lara's thoughts post-Yamatai.


Instinct.

I have always hated this word. "Trust your instincts, Lara," Roth would always say.

Said. Roth have always said.

God, I miss him so much. I didn't think after losing Mum and Dad that I could feel loss this way again. Roth never said he regarded me as a daughter, but the things he's said to me, the things he's pushed me towards, the things he's done for me – I think he did them all partly for Dad and mostly because he had wanted to.

Growing up, he's always spoken about the great Croft instinct, as if I've seen enough of my Dad to understand what it really is. He had always insisted that I would be just like my father, which unknown to him, was my greatest fear. I have had a lot of time to think about my father and what I thought being a Croft meant. All I know and understood of whatever Roth likes to call instinct was really just my father's obsession with grand stories, and its resulting single-mindedness which left me behind without parents.

So I resent this mythical inheritance of the Croft instinct if it meant that I could blame it for having lost my parents and Roth. Grim. Alex. Steph.

In many ways, I have lost Sam as well. Gone is the carefree girl that boldly sat next to me and talked me into letting her eat all my Jaffa cakes. On a bad day, she would just dance it off and tell me to relax about her problems. That's Sam – on her bad day, she makes sure no one else feels the same. But recently I could barely get a sentence out before she would yell at me for "acting weird" or "overbearing". She was herself until she wasn't. It's really a guessing game when I try to talk to her now. It surprised and deeply hurt me at first, and then I realised it is how she copes. It's hard to see her hurting this way and have to leave her alone but I suppose it is what she needs to do to get through it. I can't say that I understand what she is going through so as much as it hurts, if this is helping her then I'd give her absolutely anything I could.

I wish I could take back so much. Even though we unearthed the greatest archaeological find of the decade, it had come at the cost of everyone I love.

But I also wish I could say I'd like to undo everything. I don't; truthfully, I can't say that and mean it. It's not about Mum and Dad's work, it's not about being a Croft. It isn't about losing Roth. I feel an unexplainable draw to Yamatai. Even after discovering it, I cannot explain why I would willingly return to that hell. I just feel that there's something there. Himiko is gone, but I just know that there is some left unseen, a rock left unturned. And seeing everything only validated this feeling. Even Jonah thought I've lost my mind. I think that even if those bastards hadn't taken Sam, I would have gone back eventually.

And Sam, how I wish I didn't put her through that hell. She killed, on that island. After all she's been through, the last thing I wished for her was to learn what it was like to take a life. It brought me to depths I did not know exist. That night, in our shared bunk, she gave me a wordless, melancholic stare that told me she knew what it might feel like for me but she didn't say anything. She refused to talk much about it, or about anything, but I think she had wanted to kill Matsu which justifies to herself what she did. At least, I am hoping that it had come from a place of anger because at least that was her motivation for killing him. I'd never forgive myself if... I don't think she's experienced that level of darkness and I am thankful for that. I pray to the Gods that may be that for whatever I have done to Sam, that I will never dim her light, rob her brightness away from her.

Maybe the great instinct is a curse. It draws me to things that would take everyone I love away from me. It's left me Sam, broken as she is, as a painful reminder of its cost. I seem to destroy everything I touch. That cursed instinct drew me to her, and I've hurt her.

It's a sort of pull, the same nagging feeling about Yamatai, that there is more about her to discover. I felt that there was something beautifully complex under Sam's overt friendliness. If I hadn't felt that, I would have easily dismissed Sam as another obnoxious yank. But Sam, she understood things about me that I have kept secret for so long before she even knew exactly what it was that I studied. In conversation, she often changed topics quickly and with awfully inquisitive questions it would make my head spin. As a result, she knew more about me in a day than anyone else learned over years. With Sam, I never did mind answering her questions, and she always seemed to want to know more. I'd also always wanted to know the same about her, but that girl would answer those questions without me asking them anyway.

The very first of such questions she asked me – I still remember that at the time she had half her head shaven off which she complained took months to grow out. She had asked me, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Jaffa cake in her mouth, if I wanted to go dancing. I was already mildly embarrassed by her attention, so my answer was a short no muttered to my shoes, to which I could feel her eyeing me and she said, "Once we get a few drinks in you, you can teach me how to throw darts and I'll teach you how to dance, deal?"

I hadn't even answered her before she stuffed my textbook in her camera bag, tugged me up, said she was starving and that I had to try this overpriced latte from a small café across the street. She insisted it'd go well with Jaffa cakes and had ordered three slices of oddly-flavoured cakes before I could even think to protest any of it. It is just impossible saying no to her.

Before I knew it, we've sat there talking the entire day, and the staff had politely informed us that they were closing. She ended up at my flat and we chatted the whole night. I was a little relieved she didn't make me dance, but I felt a lot more than just relief that I've met her. I felt thankful. Blessed, even if I didn't have a God to thank for putting her in my life.

We were just two people living our separate lives, until we weren't any more. We met each other, became best friends and were no longer two separate people. Nothing about that day was deliberate. That was Sam. With her, nothing is ever planned, yet they feel exactly the way it's meant to be; perfect with her around.

It kills me to think that I may have irreversibly changed her.

If only I could blame everything on that blasted instinct, I would.


End file.
